The gut microbiome modulates the susceptibility to traumatic stress in a sex-dependent manner.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a psychological condition triggered by exposure to extreme or chronic stressful events, exhibits a sex bias in incidence and clinical manifestations. Emerging research implicates the gut microbiome in the pathogenesis of PTSD and its roles in stress susceptibility. However, it is unclear whether differential gut microbiota contribute to PTSD susceptibility in male and female rats. Here, we utilized the single prolonged stress animal model and employed unsupervised machine learning to classify stressed animals into stress-susceptible subgroups and stress-resilient subgroups. Subsequently, using 16S V3-V4 rDNA sequencing, we investigated the differential gut microbiota alterations between susceptible and resilient individuals in male and female rats. Our findings revealed distinct changes in gut microbiota composition between the sexes at different taxonomic levels. Furthermore, the abundance of Parabacteroides was lower in rats that underwent SPS modeling compared to the control group. In addition, the abundance of Tenericutes in the stress-susceptible subgroup was higher than that in the control group and stress-resilient subgroup, suggesting that Tenericutes may be able to characterize stress susceptibility. What is particularly interesting here is that Cyanobacteria may be particularly associated with anti-anxiety effects in male rats. This study underscores sex-specific variations in gut microbiota composition in response to stress and sex differences should be taken into account when using macrobiotics for neuropsychiatric treatment, highlighting potential targets for PTSD therapeutic interventions.

Emotional brain network decoded by biological spiking neural network.

Introduction: Emotional disorders are essential manifestations of many neurological and psychiatric diseases. Nowadays, researchers try to explore bi-directional brain-computer interface techniques to help the patients. However, the related functional brain areas and biological markers are still unclear, and the dynamic connection mechanism is also unknown. Methods: To find effective regions related to different emotion recognition and intervention, our research focuses on finding emotional EEG brain networks using spiking neural network algorithm with binary coding. We collected EEG data while human participants watched emotional videos (fear, sadness, happiness, and neutrality), and analyzed the dynamic connections between the electrodes and the biological rhythms of different emotions. Results: The analysis has shown that the local high-activation brain network of fear and sadness is mainly in the parietal lobe area. The local high-level brain network of happiness is in the prefrontal-temporal lobe-central area. Furthermore, the α frequency band could effectively represent negative emotions, while the α frequency band could be used as a biological marker of happiness. The decoding accuracy of the three emotions reached 86.36%, 95.18%, and 89.09%, respectively, fully reflecting the excellent emotional decoding performance of the spiking neural network with self- backpropagation. Discussion: The introduction of the self-backpropagation mechanism effectively improves the performance of the spiking neural network model. Different emotions exhibit distinct EEG networks and neuro-oscillatory-based biological markers. These emotional brain networks and biological markers may provide important hints for brain-computer interface technique exploration to help related brain disease recovery.

An orbitofrontal cortex-anterior insular cortex circuit gates compulsive cocaine use.

Compulsive drug use, a cardinal symptom of drug addiction, is characterized by persistent substance use despite adverse consequences. However, little is known about the neural circuit mechanisms behind this behavior. Using a footshock-punished cocaine self-administration procedure, we found individual variability of rats in the process of drug addiction, and rats with compulsive cocaine use presented increased neural activity of the anterior insular cortex (aIC) compared with noncompulsive rats. Chemogenetic manipulating activity of aIC neurons, especially aIC glutamatergic neurons, bidirectionally regulated compulsive cocaine intake. Furthermore, the aIC received inputs from the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and the OFC-aIC circuit was enhanced in rats with compulsive cocaine use. Suppression of the OFC-aIC circuit switched rats from punishment resistance to sensitivity, while potentiation of this circuit increased compulsive cocaine use. In conclusion, our results found that aIC glutamatergic neurons and the OFC-aIC circuit gated the shift from controlled to compulsive cocaine use, which could serve as potential therapeutic targets for drug addiction.

Association between psychological symptoms and illegal driving behaviors in a sample of Chinese private car drivers.

Background: Findings on the associations between psychological symptoms and driving behaviors in private car drivers are inadequate. Method: The study consisted of 3,115 private car drivers in Yulin, China. The measurements included socio-demographic data, traffic violations, accidents, and Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90). In addition, an ordered logistic regression model was employed to examine the association between each psychological symptom and risky driving behaviors. Results: The overall prevalence rate of any self-reported psychological symptom was 10.24%, with 9.22% for males and 11.49% for females. Among them, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, additional items, hostility, and depression were the five most common psychological symptoms, with prevalence rates of 7.90, 6.29, 6.00, 5.91, and 5.62%, respectively. Any psychological symptom factor was associated with a higher risk of traffic violations and accidents. However, the intensity of the correlations varied, with obsessive-compulsive symptoms the strongest in general traffic violations and anxiety symptoms in traffic accidents. All psychological symptoms except phobic anxiety and paranoid ideation contributed to a higher risk of failing the driver's license test. Conclusions: The prevalence rate of psychological symptoms was high in private car drivers. This study calls for an urgent need to establish a pilot tertiary prevention strategy to reduce risky driving behaviors through psychological symptom screening and interventions among private car drivers.

Expression of Twist gene in human hepatocellular carcinoma cell strains of different metastatic potential.

In order to investigate the role of Twist gene in the metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), total RNA was respectively extracted from three HCC cell strains with different metastatic potentials, HepG2, MHCC-97L and MHCC-97H. The first strand cDNA was synthesized by reverse transcription, which was then used as template to perform fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (FQ-PCR). The quantity of Twist gene expression was normalized by that of the housekeeping gene, GAPDH for each sample. ANOVA was used to estimate the relationship between Twist gene and metastasis potential of HCC. The results showed that the normalized initial cDNA concentrations of Twist gene in HepG2, MHCC-97L and MHCC-97H were (9.45+/-0.25)x10(-4), (1.82+/-0.41)x10(-3), (3.06+/-0.62)x10(-3), respectively. FQ-PCR revealed significant differences in the expression level of Twist among HCC cell strains with different metastatic potentials. It was concluded that high expression level of Twist was closely associated with more aggressive behaviors of HCC. Twist provides a novel indicator for HCC metastasis.

Expression of Twist Gene in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cell Strains of Different Metastatic Potential / 华中科技大学学报（医学）（英德文版）

In order to investigate the role of Twist gene in the metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), total RNA was respectively extracted from three HCC cell strains with different metastatic potentials, HepG2, MHCC-97L and MHCC-97H. The first strand eDNA was synthesized by reverse transcription, which was then used as template to perform fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (FQ-PCR). The quantity of Twist gene expression was normalized by that of the housekeeping gene, GAPDH for each sample. ANOVA was used to estimate the relationship between Twist gene and metastasis potential of HCC. The results showed that the normalized initial eDNA concen- trations of Twist gene in HepG2, MHCC-97L and MHCC-97H were (9.45±0.25)×104, (1.82±0.41)×10-3, (3.06±0.62)×10-3, respectively. FQ-PCR revealed significant differences in the ex- pression level of Twist among HCC cell strains with different metastatic potentials. It was concluded that high expression level of Twist was closely associated with more aggressive behaviors of HCC. Twist provides a novel indicator for HCC metastasis.